


Have a Heart

by HallowAvengence



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 23:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14758431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowAvengence/pseuds/HallowAvengence
Summary: It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, Maud thinks, most ideas do when Enid and Mildred are involved.





	Have a Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little late to this fandom, but please accept this offering!

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, Maud thinks, most ideas do when Enid and Mildred are involved.

 

It starts on a Wednesday afternoon with double potions class. A double potions class with a Miss Hardbroom, who for the last few weeks had been – if possible - even more grouchy than usual. That amount of looming and stalking cannot, Maud is pretty certain, be healthy.

 

The woman in question had been stood, rigid, in front of the class, adding dissected frog’s hearts, one by one, into her cauldron and flourishing her ladle at any second year who had so such much as _breathed_ too loudly.

 

And Enid, behind her hand, had whispered perhaps HB should keep one of the frog’s hearts back to replace her own cold, cold, cold one.

 

Mildred, and really Maud loves her but where she gets these ideas from she will never know, had said _yes_ , _that’s brilliant_ and flipped determinately through the pages of her spell book to find-

 

“ _The Have a Heart Potion?”_ Maud asked incredulously.

 

“It’s perfect,” said Mildred, smoothing down the page, “she’s always looks so sad. And look, it won’t _change_ her, just make her a bit more…”

 

“Soft,” said Enid, helpfully.

 

“Cheerful,” Mildred confirmed. “Look – ‘ _to help a witch remember what she loves, and make sure that it never gets lost!’”_

All three students glanced up at their teacher, who was delicately peeling the skin off a pickled newt eyeball.

 

“I wonder what HB loves?” Enid had murmured just as the woman in question had pressed a rusty nail through the middle of the eyeball and dropped it, with relish, into the bubbling cauldron. They all winced. 

‘I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” said Mildred, grinning crookedly. “You’ll help Maud? You’re the best at spells!”

 

Maud had watched HB add the putrid finger of a dead man into the liquid, murmuring all the while to the few students - whose stronger stomachs have allowed them to keep watching - about rigor mortis and curdled blood.

 

And, looking back Maud thinks, after the disaster of the first year’s personality potion, she really, really should have not have said:

 

“Yes.”

¥

 

They make the potion and, for a while, Maud thinks maybe they did it wrong. It is, after all, a sixth level spell and they’ve barely covered level three. But she double checks their method three times and even tests some of the concoction herself (she loves, it turns out, cake and the potion helps her remember her grandmother’s recipe for double-chocolate fudge brownies).

 

Two days pass and nothing happens. Miss Hardboom is just as disagreeable, if anything _worse_ , than she was before.

 

But then, on the third day, at breakfast, just as HB is leaning threateningly over Sybil Hallow’s pink ( _pink Miss Hallow. Really. A suitable colour for a witch? I. Think. Not.)_ notebook when suddenly there is the momentary smell of vanilla buttercream, pond water and violets and then Miss Pentangle is standing, nose-to-nose, with Miss Hardbroom, blinking.

 

The dark-haired witch lets out a tremulous sound and half-steps, half falls backwards, so quickly that her feet seem to tangle themselves in the hem of her dress. She rights herself, brushes non-existent lint off her sleeve and says, with a voice only slightly higher pitched than normal: “Pippa. What a surprise. How… nice of you to drop by so unexpectedly.”

 

“Hiccup,” says Miss Pentangle, blinking still. “I- I wasn’t expecting to drop by at all.” She glances around, takes in the lines of silent girls, porridge spoons suspended in shock half-way to open mouths. “Hello girls. Er, Hecate – a word?”

 

The two women sweep together out of the hall and the door closes on their conversation just as Miss Pentangle is saying: “really Hiccup, I’m so sorry – I must have let my mind wander or-” and the rest of her sentence is lost behind the slam of centuries old wood.

 

Maud meets Mildred and Enid’s excited gaze across the table.

 

“You don’t think…” Mildred breathes.

 

“…that we did that?” Enid finishes for her.

 

Maud wrinkles her nose in confusion. “I don’t know,” she says slowly, “that’s not what happened when _I_ took the potion. No one appeared for me.”

 

“I guess it wouldn’t make sense anyway,” Enid says, looking resigned, “it’s not like Miss Pentangle and Miss Hardbroom love each other.”

 

Mildred shifts uncomfortable.

 

“Mil?” Maud asks.

 

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Mildred says reluctantly, guilt painted across her face, “but HB and Miss Pentangle were friends, when they were at school. Really good friends I think. But they fell out.” She shrugs and eyes her juice goblet. “Oh,” she breathes, “but they made up! At the spelling bee. I don’t think they would have forgotten about each other again! It _can’t_ be us.”

 

“Yeah,” says Enid, “I think Millie’s right. We probably just made HB remember where to find particularly fat and juicy frog eyes or something.” She rolls her own eyes, “maybe that’s why she’s still in a bad mood. _Frog eyes_ wouldn’t make _me_ any happier.”

 

“Perhaps,” agrees Maud. But she watches Miss Hardbroom re-enter the hall, without Miss Pentangle, and sit delicately back in her chair at the teacher’s lounge. And, maybe the porridge has been spiked again with awake-dreaming potion and she’s hallucinating but, she’s pretty sure, that the woman is blushing, ever so slightly.

 

 

¥

By dinner time, the whole school is full of the murmurs of Miss Pentangle.

 

_Miss Pentangle who appeared in the fourth year’s potion class._

_Miss Pentangle who appeared in the West wing corridor._

_Miss Pentangle who appeared at the teacher’s table at lunch._

Always within a few inches of a steadily more and more bemused HB.

 

But, perhaps the most memorable rumour of all, whispered around the great hall by some of the older girls, is the story of _Miss Pentangle who appeared of the end of Miss Hardbroom’s broomstick during a flying class. With Miss Hardbroom still on it!_

 

Maud, on her part, had been growing steadily more and more confused throughout the day. She had returned, before dinner, to her room to fetch her spell book. She is sure there was no mention of human transference in the spell’s instructions. And when she checks, she can find no mention of it in the book.

 

“Mildred, Enid,” she whispers urgently at them, sitting heavily down across the table, over steaming bowls of suspiciously edible looking beef stew, “the whole school is talking about it!”

 

Mildred turns worried eyes to her from where they’ve been watching HB, “I know. I know. If this is our fault, we are in so much trouble.”

 

“What? Why?” Enid says, beaming, “It’s brilliant. Best prank ever! I can’t believe it worked! Do you know how much magical energy it takes to transfer someone all the way from _Pentangles!_ And our spell has been doing all day!”

 

“ _If_ it’s our spell!” Maud reminds her. “And anyway, this is _not_ a good thing! It was just meant to make her a bit, you know, happier. Not this! Mildred is right, if anyone finds out, we are in so much trouble!”

 

“…Well,” says Mildred, softly, glancing at them, gaze thoughtful, “I think it’s working. Making HB happier I mean. Look.”

 

The other two peer over Mildred’s shoulders to where HB is sat, at the teacher’s table, a book propped open in front of her, turning pages occasionally with a twirl of a single finger. And Mildred’s right, Maud thinks. Instead of the woman’s usual frown of concertation, HB looks almost… serene.

They all look at each other. “Maybe this is a good thing then… maybe, maybe we won’t get in trouble?” Maud offers.

 

“Maybe,” says Mildred.

 

“Maybe,” says Enid, “but… maybe we shouldn’t tell anyone about it. Just to be on the safe side.”

 

¥

 

It continues for a week.

 

Wherever HB turns up, within minutes, sometimes within seconds, the lingering scent of buttercream, pond water and violets turn up as well, along with a blinking Pippa Pentangle.

 

The second year’s Friday potion class has a silent, preoccupied looking Miss Pentangle sitting in the back, listening quietly and occasionally tapping away on her maglet.

 

“There is really not much point,” she tells them all when Felicity asks gleefully if she’s staying at Cackles, “in transferring back to Pentangles. Not for the time being, not until we find out what is doing this. I transfer back just to be moved back here again.” She rubs a hand across her eyes tiredly, “it’s exhausting. I hope we figure it out soon, I’ve got a school to run!”

 

And for a moment, Maud feels bad, feels like should say something but then Miss Pentangle’s tired gaze falls upon HB, stood awkwardly too one side and writing the ingredients of the smell-extinguishing potion on the blackboard. Her eyes soften, cheeks pinking slightly, mouth twitching in a way that says, despite her tiredness, she’s happy to see their teacher. More than happy, she looks like she’s glowing.

 

Miss Hardbroom claps her hands suddenly, right by Maud’s ear: “seats girls, now!” She’s as brisk and demanding as ever, levying her fair shares of _really Mildred Hubble_ and _honestly Felicity Foxglove three ounces of swamp fog three,_ but she’s softer too. When Harriet Goodcharm accidently vanishes her whole nose, rather than just her sense of smell, HB simply sighs, waves her hand and declares – to the shock and amazement of the whole class – that _it’s a common error, one she may even have made herself in her youth._ Beside Maud, Mildred’s mouth unhinges itself with shock.

 

“It’s like… she’s still _her_ ,” Mildred says under her breath, over her own bubbling cauldron, ‘but-“

 

“-a less grouchy version!” Enid finishes. “Just stern, not evil!” And Maud wishes, half-fond and half-exasperated, that they would stop ending each other’s sentences quite so much.

 

Though, privately, she agrees. The spell worked, and worked _perfectly._ A sixth level spell!

 

But then, three minutes before the end of a perfectly pleasant and uneventful class, things go… wrong.

 

Miss Pentangle is in her corner, quietly writing notes on her maglet when Dawn Raven approaches Miss Hardbroom with a question about whether her sparrow’s tongue should be quite that shade of pink and suddenly-

 

Miss Pentangle is sitting in Miss Hardbroom’s lap, noses touching, the lingering smell of buttercream, pond water and violets tinging the air.

 

The whole room freezes.

 

“This, Pippa,” comes HB’s voice, slightly muffled by the amount of blond hair in her mouth, “needs to stop.”

 

“Agreed,” says the other witch, shifting backwards slightly, gently brushing her own hair from Miss Hardbroom’s mouth. “Oh, Hecate,” she says fondly, “I’ve smudge your lipstick.” And suddenly, it is like the rest of the class fades away and Miss Pentangle and Miss Hardbroom are looking at each other, breathing shallowly, arms still wrapped around one another.

 

The class watches them, curiously, _10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds_ and then-

 

“Hecate? Pippa? The alarm went off again, notifying me of another of Pippa’s transferences! Is everything- oh!” Miss Cackle pauses, mid bustle, in the doorway of the potions lab. She clears her throat meaningfully, and watches with twinkling eyes as her fellow educators attempt to detangled themselves, blushing furiously. Maud eyes Miss Hardbroom with something like wonder, she hadn’t known a person was able to turn that colour. 

 

“Really, we must get to the bottom of this,” Miss Cackle murmurs. ‘Girls, to the hall, we are calling an assembly. Hecate, Pippa – er, make your way there as soon as possible.”

 

And with that, the whole class, Miss Cackle included, is transferred on mass to the great hall.

 

“Uh oh,” she hears Enid whisper into Mildred’s ear just as the potions classroom mists out of view.

¥

 

“Girls,” Miss Cackles raises her arms, attempting to silence the hush. Every year group is present, muttering excitedly amongst themselves, and staring openly at Miss Pentangle and Miss Hardbroom.

 

The spell, it seems, is degrading, but getting stronger as it does. Every time the two witches try to move more than a couple in inches away from each other, Pippa disappears, only to reappear suddenly almost of top of Miss Hardbroom. The smell of buttercream, pond water and violets is a constant presence, floating above the heads of the student body.

 

The entire hall watches as HB shifts uncomfortably under their combined gaze and, in doing so, moves herself further away from Miss Pentangle. Miss Pentangle appears immediately in front of her, their bodies pressed tightly together.

 

“Merlin,” Miss Cackle snaps, “girls, do be quiet. Hecate, Pippa, hold hands for now – maybe that will contain it for a while.”

 

Miss Pentangle reaches out shyly, offering her hand to a very red-looking Miss Hardbroom who, despite her clear embarrassment, knits their fingers together, as if the movement is as natural as breathing.

 

“Now, I’m sure you all know why we are here girls,” Miss Cackles says, and hush falls. “Our deputy headmistress and the headmistress of Pentangles seem to have been placed under some kind of spell. Both schools’ staff have been exploring every possibility as to why this,” Miss Cackle waves a hand, encompassing the whole situation, “might be happening. But, I am afraid, we are at a loss. And so, we are asking you. Has anyone, whether purposefully or accidently, executed any spell or potion that might have caused this?”

 

The whole hall is silent.

 

Maud risks a glance at Enid and Mildred. They both send her wide-eyed looks.

 _Do we tell?_ Maud tries to ask them with her eyes.

 

“Now girls, really, someone must have done _something._ We really have no options left as to what might be the cause. Be warned, if you do not step forward now, the consequences could be serve.”

 

Maud, out the corner of her eye, watches Mildred bite her lip, wringing her hands.

 

“And I do not mean punitively. If whatever magical mishap has caused this is allowed to continue, and degrades - as it seems to be doing – further, we have no idea what that might mean for poor Miss Pentangle and Miss Hardboom.” Miss Cackle continues, peering, uncharacteristically sharp, over her spectacles at the students. “Why, at this rate, by dinner time, Miss Pentangle could be transferring herself _inside_ Miss Hardbroom.”

 

From beside her, HB lets out an audible squeak, eyes wide, face – if possible – turning even redder. So red, indeed, that she’s almost purple.

 

Maud can’t blame her, _inside,_ that sounds messy. She glances at Mildred, who nods at her and, rather bravely, Maud thinks, puts up her hand. Maud raises her own, tentatively, alongside her. Enid following after a beat or two.

 

“Mildred Hubble,” Miss Hardbroom says, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, “why am I not surprised.”

 

¥

Maud, shamefaced and a little stunned that they hadn’t been expelled on the spot, hands Miss Cackle her spell book open to the right page.

 

They had been transferred to the headmistress’s office. Miss Hardbroom and Miss Pentangle, with their hands still entwined.

 

“ _The Have a Heart potion,”_ Miss Cackle reads, “ _to help a witch remember what she loves, and make sure that it never gets lost!’”_ She glances up at the three of them, her stern look melting, Maud thinks, utterly baffled, into something like supressed mirth. “And you cast this spell, Mildred, Enid, Maud?”

 

“Yes, Miss Cackle,” they chorus at her.

 

“That’s a sixth level spell,” HB murmurs, leaning to look over the older witch’s shoulder, careful, Maud notes, to keep her hand, her whole body, pressing against Miss Pentangle’s. She raises curious eyes to the three of them, “that’s very advanced magic for second years. Are you _sure_ it was successful?”

 

“Well…” Maud starts, gulping and losing her voice for a second as three pairs of eyes swing to her, “…er, I tried it. On myself I mean. When we thought it maybe hadn’t worked. But it did. I remembered a recipe for brownies.”

 

“A brown recipe is hardly the same as transferring, countless times, an adult witch, countless miles.” Miss Hardbroom says, frowning at Miss Cackle questioningly. “Do you think…” She trails off, frowning, her gaze moving to consider where her hand is clasped in Miss Pentangle’s own.

 

“What,” says Miss Pentangle, quietly, her eyes meeting Maud’s slowly, as if reluctant to take her gaze from the face of Miss Hardbroom, “did it feel like, when you remembered your recipe, Miss Spellbody?

 

“Um…” Maud thinks, “it was like… feeling warm, and safe, and happy. It sounds, strange, but my whole body felt like it was in a warm bath.” And had _felt_ strange too, Maud remembers, but lovely.

 

“And now?” Miss Pentangle asks, her voice, if anything, even quieter than before. “When you re-remember the recipe or something reminds you of it?”

 

“The same, really” Maud answers, thinking, assessing as she speaks how her body feels. “Happy, warm, and content – like I know I will remember the recipe forever.”

 

She’s talking nonsense really, she thinks, but to her surprise when she raises her eyes to meet Miss Pentangle’s again, the witch looks…hopeful. But sad too, and happy, all at the same time. Her eyes are wet.

 

Adults, Maud thinks, are very strange creatures.

 

Miss Cackle closes her eyes, and sighs softly. She looks at Miss Pentangle meaningfully, shooting a quick look at Miss Hardbroom who is staring, fixedly, at her own feet. “Girls take a seat please.”

 

“I think, Miss Cackle,” Miss Pentangle says gently, gaze intent on HB’s face even as she addresses the headmistresses, “that Hiccup and I need to talk.”

 

“Yes,” Miss Cackle agrees and, to Maud’s surprise, the older witch reaches out and touches Miss Hardbroom’s hand softly. It’s a motherly gesture, Maud realises, soft and indulgent and proud. “I will make sure no one disturbs you for the rest of the evening. And Heacate,” she says the words so quietly that Maud almost doesn’t catch them, “you deserve to be happy.”

 

Miss Hardbroom glances at her then, and, to Maud’s surprise, HB’s – their strict, no-nonsense, stern potions teacher’s – eyes are shiny with unshed tears. The two witches, pink and black, transfer away.

 

What on earth, wonders Maud, just happened? She had expected a furious Miss Hardbroom, eyes rolling with rage, hissing low and dangerous about _being a disgrace to the witch’s code_ and _putting the whole school in danger._ Not this, sad, quiet HB who had looked for all the world heartbroken. She glances at the other two, who are looking equally flabbergasted, regarding their remaining educator apprehensively.

 

“Sit,” Miss Cackle instructs again, waving a hand and making a teapot and four cups spin across from the low coffee table, to pour them out each a mug of tea.

 

“Are we- are we not in trouble, Miss Cackle?” Mildred asks, taking her tea and looking at it, puzzled.

 

“Girls, do you understand what just happened?”

 

All three girls shake their heads.

 

“Is Miss Hardbroom okay?” Enid asks, tentative. “She looked… upset.”

 

Miss Cackle regards her seriously. “I am going to explain something to you three, but I will trust that you will keep it to yourselves.” She waits for them all to nod. “You created a, well, perhaps to call it a love potion would be a misnomer, but something of that sort. Not a spell that created love, you understand, where love had not existed, but a spell in which love that had been ignored, supressed, lost was… made un-ignorable.”

 

Maud glances at Mildred and Enid; they look back at her equally lost. Miss Cackle smiles at them.

 

“You are not in trouble. But only because,” and she lays her palm flat across the open page of _The Have a Heart potion_ , “to transforms a spell like this – which really, is meant only to help witches recall nostalgic tokens, memories, that kind of thing – and change it into something as powerful as you girls did, well, that could only have happened if the potion had been created in conditions of extreme good intention. You wanted, I believe I am right in saying, to help Miss Hardbroom, no?”

 

“Yes,” Mildred says, softly. Miss Cackle nods. “We thought she had seemed, um…”

 

“Down,” finishes Enid.

 

“Well, not only did you perform highly complicated magic for three students of your level, but also did so under true and good intentions, _and_ you came forward honestly when you were asked, before any real damage could be done.”

 

Maud blinks. The world has clearly turned upside down. Miss Hardbroom almost _crying_ , and now, well, now Miss Cackle sounds almost grateful, like they did something good, rather than performing illegal magic, and on a teacher no less!

 

“Will Miss Hardbroom and Miss Pentangle be okay? Will you be able to take off the spell?” Mildred asks.

 

“Yes,” says Miss Cackle, smiling openly now. “You might not understand this yet girls, but one day, I think you will. Honesty, with yourself and with others, if often the most powerful magic of all. Now. I believe you three must have classes to attended to. Chanting, if I’m not mistaken. Oh, and girls, not a word, please, about this conversation to anyone.”

 

And with that, Miss Cackle transfers them, suddenly, to their chanting classroom. And really, Maud thinks, bemused after such an unexpected conversation, she has had quite enough of being transferred about for one day.

 

¥

Everything goes back to normal. Or it does, at least, until Mildred and Enid get another _idea_.

 

But two nights after their talk with Miss Cackle, Maud is sneaking by Miss Hardbroom’s room, back to bed after a night of eating ice-cream and cake in Millie’s room, when she stubs her toe so painfully that she can’t help but scream.

 

Miss Hardbroom is next to her in a second, hands hoovering worriedly over Maud’s shoulders, “Maud Spellbody! Are you hurt? You screamed and- _what_ _are you doing out of bed_?”

 

“Hecate,” an unexpected but familiar voice says, their tone gentle but reprising.

 

Maud, toe still smarting with pain, looks up to find not only Miss Hardbroom, hair tumbling in dark waves over her shoulders and dressed in her nightgown, but Miss Pentangle too, also in bedclothes.

 

Miss Hardbroom rolls her eyes, apparently to herself. “Miss Spellbody, you should not be out of bed.” She glances, eyes sharp even in the dark, to the crumbs clinging to the front of Maud’s pyjamas.  

 

“I’m sure,” says Miss Pentangle, laying a gentle hand on HB’s arm, “that Maud was just on her way back from a trip to the loo. Right, Maud?”

 

“Eer, right,” Maud quavers. And then, confusedly, and, in hindsight, clearly with semi-suicidal intentions, “What are you doing here Miss Pentangle? Miss Cackle said you had managed to find an antidote for the potion?”

 

Miss Hardbroom, immediately, goes bright red, her face almost illuminating the corridor. Miss Pentangle, slightly more composed, just smiles at her. “The potion has been fully lifted, don’t worry. Let’s just say, Maud, I am making sure your hardworking deputy head does not forget me. Off to bed with you now.”

 

In the morning, Maud will think about bringing it up over breakfast with Enid and Mildred but then, on reflection, thinking about how Miss Hardbroom and Miss Pentangle had pulled each other back into HB’s room once they had considered her out of sight, murmuring to one another, bodies close and touching, she thinks maybe somethings are best kept to yourself.


End file.
